Unit Overview
Hatchet
This award-winning novel is part drama, a ton of adventure, and all courage!
Brian is on his way to Canada when the pilot of his small prop plane suffers a heart attack. Brian is forced to crash-land the plane and finds himself stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness with only his clothing and a hatchet his mother gave him as a present before his departure. Exhausted, terrified, and hungry, Brian struggles to find food and make a shelter for himself. He has no special knowledge of the woods, and he must find a new kind of awareness and patience as he meets each day's challenges. Is the water safe to drink? Are the berries he finds poisonous? Will he survive his ordeal?
The author, Gary Paulsen, just happens to be a former boy-survivalist and the author of about 200 other books. He’s also been a dogsled racer, a fur trapper, a former missile-tracker, an ex-carny, and from a young age, was rounding up his own meals in the forest. If you like this novel, there are more in the series! After Hatchet, Paulsen packed four more books with survival stories from his own life: The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian's Return, and Brian's Hunt. The series wasn't preplanned but readers loved The Hatchet so much that the author got hundreds of thousands of letters asking for more!